NextWindow's Optical Touch Screen Technology

NextWindow's optical touch screen technology uses two optical sensors located at the corners of the screen. The optical sensors track the movement of any object close to the surface by detecting the interruption of an infra-red light source. The light is emitted in a plane across the surface of the screen and can be either active (infra-red LED) or passive (special reflective surfaces). At the heart of the system is a printed circuit controller board. The controller receives signals from the optical sensors and runs software that compensates for optical distortions and triangulates the position of the finger (or any object) extremely accurately.		NextWindow Controller Board
Some of NextWindow's products, such as the 1900 Touch Assembly, use low-profile optical sensors mounted on the surface of the glass. Other products use different configurations. In all models, the infrared light source and optical sensors are synchronised using a sophisticated algorithm, which also eliminates the effect of ambient light.     NextWindow 1900 optical sensor		NextWindow 1900 Touch assembly (showing the optical sensor mounted on clear glass)

With the exception of the interactive whiteboard, NextWindow's glass touch surface overlays the display surface. Because the system uses optical technology, no special surface coatings are required. A clear glass touch surface allows for maximum clarity of image, and also avoids the effect of scratches or marks on the surface.

NextWindow's products fall into two main categories:

	Touch panel overlays that touch-enable existing LCD or plasma screens.
	Interactive touch frames for integration into manufacturers' display models.

Plug and Play

NextWindow's touch screens do not require special software drivers; they incorporate HID-compliant, USB plug-and-play interfaces. For those applications that need it, a serial interface is available on the 2403 models.

NextWindow 2403 Touch Panel Overlay - Ports

Power

The 1900 Touch Assembly is USB powered and does not require a separate power supply unit. Other models use a 12 V power supply unit.

Operating Systems

NextWindow's Touch screens are compatible with Windows XP, Windows 2000, Mac OS and Linux.

Calibration

The simple four-point calibration is normally only required when the touch screen is powered up for the first time.

Mouse Functionality

NextWindow's touch screens provide full mouse functionality - click, drag, double-click and right-click. The double-click and right-click timers can be controlled independently using NextWindow's USB Config utility.

Multi-Touch

NextWindow's technology supports multi-touch, which not only provides the intuitive human-computer interface as above, but also surpasses the capability of traditional pointing devices. Multi-touch provides a much richer set of gestures. For example, you can use your finger and thumb in a stretching, squeezing or rotating action to manipulate an object on screen. For an overview of NextWindow's multi-touch capability, see: NextWindow_multitouch_whitepaper (322 KB pdf file).

NextWindow two-touch example

Applications Software

The beauty of a touch screen is that it is totally intuitive - you point at the option you want.

You can operate software, such as drawing, spreadsheet or presentation programs simply by touching the screen. You can draw, write, move/edit objects and scroll through menus. In addition, high-quality, specialised interactive applications for touch screens are readily available.